It's that time of the week where I answer questions from you lovely folks. Today's topic is chimpanzee imagination, which comes from Shibin. They wanted to know:
What is the approximate time period when early primates developed a brain that is capable of imagination?
Of course, this question presupposes that there are primates out there capable of imagination. Which itself is an interesting topic. An obvious candidate for an ape with imagination would be the chimpanzee. We know we have imagination and they're our closest living relatives, so if any other species should have it then it would be them.
Which raises yet another issue: what exactly is imagination? Common definitions revolve around very human-centric concepts like "creativity". How can you test for that in a chimp? Maybe see how good it is at art? Even if that wasn't a glib answer, how exactly could we even start to judge the artistic skill of another species? We have a hard enough time doing it within our own population.
For the purposes of this post, I think you can break imagination down into three "layers". Each is built upon the previous.
- The ability to hold concepts and objects in the mind.
- The ability to manipulate those things within the mind.
- The ability to come up with some thing brand new as a result of that manipulation.
Now, there's a bounty of evidence that chimps can achieve that first layer. They can build a "mental map" of their environment, charting the quickest route around. When they found a good rock to bash nuts open with, they could figure out the quickest way to get back to those nuts. It is presumed they did through "imagining" their local environment.
It's also clear that they can manipulate these mental plans. When faced with a new source of rock, or their preferred source of rock is moved, the chimps have no problem dealing with it. Clearly they aren't just rote learning where everything is. Animals which do that are often thrown off by the movement of the key "locales" they've memorised because they can't manipulate the mental map to adjust.
For example, baboons often encounter rival groups and have to take evasive manoeuvres. Afterwards, they often find it hard to calculate an alternate route to where ever they were trying to get to. In some cases, they even just give up on the journey and head home. This seems to be because they don't have the ability of chimps to "imagine" the local environment and plot new courses in it.
If baboons lack this stage of imagination, this also provides some clue as to when it may have evolved. Chimps and baboons split around 30 million years ago; suggesting that the unique chimp abilities developed at some point within those 30 million years.
But did they develop that third layer over this time period? Can they use this imagination to come up with brand new ideas? That's where things start to get a bit iffy. In the wild it's clear they do come up with new ideas, but this happens relatively rarely. In fact, it happens so infrequently that some of their tools and strategies haven't changed in 4,000 years. In the time since we've gone from pyramids to outer space chimps have gone from smashing nuts with rocks to . . . still doing the exact same thing. Even at the exact same tree (until it died).
Does that mean chimps don't have imagination? Or just that it's on a slightly smaller scale than ours? I don't know. I don't really care. Imagination is a bit of a non-science word, which is why I had to make up a definition at the start of this post.
Chimps are smart. Chimps are creative. Chimps are ace. If you want to label these powers of mental maps imagination or not, that's down to you.
